


ghosts of our peace

by anjalikaastras



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Character Study, F/F, Hurt No Comfort, Introspection, amidst all the choices you make, hilda's fuckin dead, it's just about the people left behind, it's just angst, passing mention of ferdibert/edeleth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:54:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22000075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anjalikaastras/pseuds/anjalikaastras
Summary: Companion fic to https://archiveofourown.org/works/22000012a person takes 306 seconds to drown. it has been 306 days since the battle of derdriu. and she has not stopped drowning since.
Relationships: Marianne von Edmund/Hilda Valentine Goneril
Comments: 2
Kudos: 30





	ghosts of our peace

**Author's Note:**

> oof. this is not my best.

Ferdinand and Hubert marry ten months after the battle at Derdriu. It has only been a few months ever since those who slither in the dark were destroyed by those that rule the shadows. Peace has dawned upon Fodlan, and the ringing of church bells only make the scene even happier.

Edelgard and Byleth announce their own engagement weeks later.

To some, it is a relieving balm. It is a light for all their hearts: knowing that despite all the grief wrought by the endless war, love still exists. Love can come into being like an emerging snowdrop, even amidst bloodsoaked battlefields. And when all the carnage is over, what was once a small bud can blossom into a beautiful bloom.

They deserve it, everyone will say — and it is not wrong.

To say Marianne hates them for it is an untruth.

To say Marianne wishes she was like them is a bit closer.

To say Marianne wonders why she celebrates the greatest joys of the two people who murdered the only one she loved, that is the closest.

* * *

Emotions are like balls of yarn — looking neat on the outside, easy to unwrap, not so easy to untangle. There is peace now, peace that she is grateful for, but there is also absence — a gaping vacuum where once there had been another girl. Where there could have been a head of pink hair and rosy lips and a smile that wasn’t the one for charming brothers or high-ranking lords, but a smile that knew it held captive the only heart it’d ever want, and revelled in that. A smile that returned all the affection it was given. A smile that was Marianne von Edmund’s and Marianne von Edmund’s alone.

It began to hurt, for her, the day that spell flew from Hubert von Vestra’s (maybe halfway to being a von Aegir) fingertips, collided with a beating and laughing heart, and in that moment her world _vanished._ Passing on, she thinks, is unbelievably simple, for all the mystique and tragedy stories and poems ascribe to it. A heart beats and smiles and laughs for a moment, and then does not the next. From one to zero. From three lords to one. From two hearts to one broken in two.

_and time, they say, will heal all wounds, but this one festers and grows like an unsightly sore not even the best faith magic will heal. she tells herself meaningless words of encouragement, but deep inside: she knows it will never go away. it is like she has inhaled a bit of the night sky, and it stirs deep in her stomach, an emptiness that will never be filled ; a part of herself scorched away._

She stands by the balcony of the castle as she is wont to do these days, and thinks she can hear a voice — a voice that is like a sad laugh. _It’s okay, Mari. These kind of things happen in war,_ like she was talking about a movie and not the quiet corpses and quieter rooms to return to. War is loud, deafeningly so — the clang of metal and commands and magic can be heard miles away, saying nothing of what it is like when one is in the very thick of the action. But when the haze of bloodshed and survival clouds your mind, you do not have to live with thoughts, writhing like a crimson flower taking root and sprouting invasively within it, at least for a while.

She thinks to herself: would it be better to become a beast like her descendants before her, like Maurice ? For beasts need not sentience but the heady liquor of blood, and beasts live in solitude, knowing not love nor trust and thus never feeling the pain that comes with them. It would be easier, so much easier, if she was to let herself descend into the depths of her cursed Crest, but she _cannot_ , _will not_ , because in her heart of hearts she knows a wounded spirit remains wounded no matter what grotesque form the body takes.

War demands sacrifices for causes just or unjust, and love, strong as it might be, is still second to luck in determining who lives and who dies. Still ruminating on it, she leaves for the washroom in preparation for sleep, remembering embraces that are nothing but phantom residue on cold, dry skin — skin soaked too much in warm blood to be much else. _There is a new life ahead of us_ , Edelgard promised both before and after, and there has been. She merely neglected to say who it would be better or worse for.

Marianne will lie down tonight, in sheets that are too white and too loose and too large for her body, the crushing weight on her chest settling itself over her whole body, and wonder, if this is what it feels like to drown.

The bed is cold tonight. It always has been.

* * *

Maybe, in another world, there will be two girls. After returning to their respective homes, they will exchange letters, exchange design ideas. They will build on the open plains of a changes world together, and though they will never be quite so magnificently rich as they _could_ have been, they are content. There will be a bowl of soup with two spoons on a table in a restaurant, and they will eat like they have all the time in the world.

One of them will say something, or swipe some hair from her eyes, and the other will laugh like tinkling bells, eyes glittering like crisp snow, and clasp the former’s hand in hers. The twinned rings she has just made will shine like stars upon their slender fingers.

And they will wonder if this is what love is like — if this is falling in love over and over again, and they will each pray to a goddess (more out of habit than of faith) to give them not just this day, but an infinite tomorrow. And it is a good dream, for the sole girl left behind in a world that was changed by her own hand (there were others, but she was complicit too, and in the books of history, there will be little differentiation).

But no matter what, every dream must end, and its dreamer must wake up to a world that is lonely in victory. She will open her eyes to the briefest glimpse of a beloved’s phantasm, fading with the morning dew.

The pillow is warm with hot tears tonight, and will be stiff with the salt of grief that has lost its water in the morning. It always has been.

  
  



End file.
